


Tumult in the Clouds

by Juliette1713



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-18 21:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16127456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliette1713/pseuds/Juliette1713
Summary: Alternatingly angsty and fluffy future fic with Maggie and Joel.





	Tumult in the Clouds

It was the silence that first told him something was wrong. The Brick was always alive with activity, particularly during the lunch rush, so when Joel walked into a room so silent he could hear the rustling of his own coat, he figured something was amiss. 

His next clue was when every head in the place turned to look at him but no one met his eye. The radio had been turned off, and no one was eating - they just looked at Joel, standing by the door. He felt like the town pariah. Like he had when he'd been new to Cicely.

"What's, uh, what's going on?" he stammered nervously, to no one in particular. 

Holling exchanged a weighty glance with Maurice, standing beside him at the bar, and then approached Joel, his eyes cast downward as he moved towards the door. "Sitka air traffic control called Maurice about an hour ago... You'd better have a seat..."

Before Holling offered him a chair, he had realized she wasn't in the room. After Sitka, she was going to meet him for lunch, and he'd been running late all morning. He managed to make it there just 5 minutes after their appointed time. So that she wasn't yet there...and that the room was silent...and that Holling had said something about air traffic control...Joel refused to let the thought enter his mind, even though he knew Holling's next words before they were spoken.

"Joel, there's been an accident."

\-----

She'd been up early the day prior, having to cram a run to Anchorage in before heading on to Sitka that afternoon. He'd snagged the hem of her nightshirt and pulled her back into bed after she silenced the 5 am alarm and had started to rise. She laughed as she fell back next to him. "I need to get out of bed, you know."

"Do you really have to stay overnight in Sitka?" He wrapped his arms around her from behind, mumbling into her ear. 

"Fleischman, we go through this every time. It'll be 4 before I'm done there. I could take try off then, but the sun won't stay up long enough and I'll fly into the side of a mountain in the dark before I get back here."

"You know I hate when you joke about that..." he said quietly.

"Fine. Here - if I don't stay the night, when else am supposed to sleep with my secret boyfriend? Better?"

"Much. Is he taller than me?" 

"Who isn't?"

He kissed her behind her ear and she squirmed. "Mmmmm, does he know you pretend to be ticklish here, too?"

"Pretend to?"

"You like this a lot more than you're willing to admit." He kissed down the side of her neck. "And this. Hey...since we're both up... " He nudged her shoulder down to the bed so she was laying on her back and moved on top of her to kiss her lips, his hands sliding up under her shirt. 

"Fleischman, it's 5 in the morning!" 

Undeterred, he pulled her shirt over her head and threw it on the floor before kissing along her collarbone. "Yeah, but you're gone until tomorrow night..." 

"It's one night. I think you'll survive..." she tried to sound annoyed but her hands were already in his hair, twirling the curls at the base of his neck. 

"Maybe, but I don't want to risk it..." He kissed his way up her throat to her chin and then mouth.

She kissed him back; she still entirely lacked willpower when it came to him, even after all this time. She ended up leaving 20 minutes later than she'd intended to, without a shower, hurrying all the way to the airfield.

\-----

"She's not here. How are you?" Joel had eaten an early dinner alone at home the night she'd stayed in Sitka. He figured he'd give his mom a call. He knew she'd still be up, even with the time difference. She'd immediately asked to talk to Maggie and then realized why he'd called. 

"I'm fine. So, she's not in tonight, and you're lonely and calling me? Oh, I'm flattered."

He was indignant. "I wouldn't characterize it that way - I wanted to talk to you. I haven't talked to you in a couple of weeks."

"No, you haven't. But I talked to Marilyn yesterday. And Maggie last weekend. *They* find time to call me. Even when they're not lonely and bored."

"Ma, I told you, I wanted to call tonight..."

"Where is she? You two aren't in another snit are you? You'd better apologize to that girl, you know, because I'm sure..."

"Really?! You're taking her side in an argument you know nothing about which hasn't even actually happened? We're not fighting, Ma. She's in Sitka overnight for work."

"Good. I hope you don't have too many lonely nights away from each other... Marilyn said there's still no progress on my becoming a grandmother, and you being so often apart isn't going to help that along, you know..."

"Ma!"

"Just mentioning. It's disappointing, is all. Anyway, you know, I ran into Rabbi Shulman the other day and he reminded me the high holidays are early this year - barely even September for Yom Kippur, did you see that's when it starts? Who ever heard of such a thing - the leaves will still be on the trees. It just doesn't feel right. You know, speaking of trees, though, I planted a lovely Japanese maple next to the window by the den. Where the rhododendrons were. Do you remember still, Joel? The garden out front?"

"Uh...I don't know. Not really, Ma."

"Well, one had died, you know, and they worked best as a pair, really, so we took the other one out. Your father wanted to throw it away, but it was so nice that I just couldn't. Mrs. Allen down the street said she had just the place for it, so I..."

His attention was flagging; he tried to picture the garden she was talking about but it was foggy. It had been a long time since he'd been back. The last time was when he and Maggie had flown to New York 4 years ago, near when his contract was ending. He'd asked her to come home with him for a week. He'd seen where she grew up in Grosse Pointe, and he wanted her to see where he'd come from. She figured he was dragging her out there to sell her on moving to the City; she had no idea he planned to tell her there that he had decided to stay in Alaska. 

She'd met his mother again on that visit. No longer the pilot friend who his mother suspected was quite a bit more - the woman who'd once answered his phone suspiciously early on a Sunday morning. On this trip, she was...well not quite even his girlfriend. But they were together. His mother had been elated. 

For them, though, it had been a bumpy trip, their smooth flight from Anchorage notwithstanding. He was constantly on edge, aware of the weight of what he was going to tell her, trying to wait for the right time. She was upset and uncomfortable throughout their trip, believing she'd have to break his heart at the end, when he would ask her to move to New York and she'd have to say no. As they did in their earliest days, they redirected their own fears into anger with each other, sniping back and forth over every minor problem.

They'd gotten turned around in midtown on their way to dinner and had given in to an argument that had started about finding their way. He was worried about missing their reservation since he'd booked it weeks ago, as this place was one he'd heard from a friend was the next big thing. There was a spitting rain they hadn't anticipated or dressed for, compounding their misery with cold.

He'd offered her his sport coat, which made her bristle. "I don't need your chivalry, Fleischman."

"O'Connell, I have a long sleeved shirt and a t-shirt underneath it. You have bare arms it's freezing and wet. This isn't chivalry, it's practicality. Take it. Please. I promise never to hold another door for you again as long as I live, if you just take this coat."

"When have you ever held a door for me? Ugh, fine." She shrugged into it and looked for something new to be irritated over to offset the sweetness of his gesture. "You know, it is so typical that you got us lost like this. You never plan ahead and have no ability to think beyond your next turn. You're *from* here - how are you lost?"

"I'm not from 33rd and 5th. I grew up out in Queens." 

"Why didn't we pick somewhere out there then?"

"This place is supposed to be incredible. It took me weeks of calling to get us this reservation, by the way."

"So you're conflating popularity with quality?"

"Conflating? I wanted to take you somewhere nice."

"Well, I'm starving. Are we anywhere near where we're going?"

"You're so impatient, O'Connell. Calm down. I think I might know where we are now."

"*I'm* impatient?! Joel Fleischman is standing here telling me I'm impatient?"

"Could you be a little louder - I think parts of Hoboken can't quite hear you yelling at me."

"Oh that is it, Fleischman! Why did I let you drag me all the way..."

It was then that the light drizzle turned into a sudden, hard, and pouring rain as they stood on the sidewalk, where they froze in shock for enough time to get mostly soaked. They ran half a block and dove into an alcoved doorway for cover. 

This had gone from bad to worse, and it had started to dawn on Joel that the evening couldn't be slavaged. "Well...so much for dinner. Even if we can find this place, by the time we do, we'll be too wet to be decent enough looking to be let in to eat."

"Can't we get a cab?"

"When it's raining in New York? Only if somehow the other 8 million people in midtown haven't noticed the rain yet." He gnashed his teeth in frustration, turning away from her. "Damn it! Dinner was going to be when I..." He didn't finish his thought, which was that dinner was when he was going to tell her. He figured it was now or never. He turned to face her again, taking her hands in his. "Look, O'Connell. I need to tell you something..."

She'd been shivering in the cold rain, which movement only intensified as her fear became realized. She couldn't let this happen here. "Flesichman, please. Don't. I don't want this to end in a doorway like this, with us mad at each other."

"What?! End? Are you..."

Maggie's eyes teared up. "I...I can't move here with you. I know your contract's up and I'm sorry, but I can't. Nothing against the city or you...epecially you...look, Fleischman...Joel. I love you. I've given this a lot of thought, though, and I need to stay in Cicely."

His posture relaxed, and he smiled happily. "I know that. I always have. About Cicely, I mean. Not that..."

"Well...so I'm sorry. It's part of why I've been so cranky this trip."

"Only this trip? That's all you've ever been cranky with me?"

Her eyes flashed irritation, glaring in response.

"Sorry. Okay, Maggie, I... That just sounds strange, I can't call you that, no matter what I'm trying to say to you. O'Connell, I was going to do this at dinner, but... then you beat me to it. I was finally going to tell you, I love you, too. So since you took away the element of surprise on that point, I'm going to get it back by telling you...I decided I'm going to stay in Cicely. After my contract is over. Except you just ended things with us." He smiled again. "So I guess I'm on my own out there now."

"You're staying?! And you love me?" Maggie's face had lit up, her eyes still red. Her wet hair was clinging to her forehead and neck in dripping, short little tendrils, her cheeks pink with cold, and she looked beautiful to him - moreso in that minute than any that he'd known her so far.

"Yeah. Madly." He laughed and was grinning at her now, eyes sparkling. "You love me?"

"Yeah. I mean, I guess I do. Against my better judgment, of course." She tempered the joy in her voice but couldn't help but grin back herself. His rain mussed hair, still dripping onto his shirt, and his gleeful smile had given him that rare look of being innocent and adorable - not the staid, serious manner he always tried to project.

"Of course." He wrapped his arms around her, pulling them together and kissing her, their lips warm depsite the cold skin of their rain-soaked faces. They kissed against the wall in the sheltered doorway, he still dripping wet in his dress shirt and tie and she in his too-big sportcoat, until the rain slowed 10 minutes later. Later, they ate together and had a celebratory bottle of barely drinkable wine in a little no name pizza joint around the corner. It was one of his happiest New York moments and it had nothing to do with the city that was no longer his home.

"Joel? Are you even listening to my story?"

"Um, what Ma? Sorry."

"Nothing, nothing." His mother clucked at him good naturedly. "I need to go anyway; it's bedtime here. I love you, Joel. Your father sends his love, too, from all these thousands of miles away. You tell Maggie hi from us. She'll be home tomorrow and all will be right with your world again, my dear. Good night."

"Night, Ma."

\----

Maggie checked and rechecked the ropes securing her cargo - some inventory due for Ruth-Anne's, the mail, and some new equipment that had come in for Joel's lab. She walked the perimeter of her aircraft, completing her visual inspection, and then climbed into the cockpit, setting on its passenger seat the birthday card she'd gotten him. She snapped her new seatbelt straps over her shoulders - she'd had to retrofit her plane with them to placate Joel after an angry series of arguments they'd had about the laws of physics. She relented - they'd probably be required in a few years anyway - but she still wasn't used to them, even 6 months in.

She pondered what to write in his card while awaiting takeoff instructions. He was turning 35 tomorrow, catching up to her finally, and though he'd claimed not to care, she'd carefully arranged a surprise party tonight at the Brick and had worked to convince him nothing was happening. Something felt momentous about the occasion for her, even though it hadn't been for her when she turned 35, and it sure didn't seem to be for him.

"Cessna 4423, you're cleared for takeoff on runway 29. Light rain and low clouds just east northeast of the field."

"Thanks, Sitka. Got it." She radioed out her initial headings as she taxied to the runway. She checked her gauges one more time before lining up and taking off. 

Once airborne, she banked to turn east towards Cicely, towards the rain-soaked clouds. As she turned, she took in the view of the sea, the islands, and the mountains in the distance. There was more to do on her overnights in Anchorage and Juneau, but she liked Sitka the best of the "big cities." Even so, she was eager to get back home.

Her engine sounded a little rough on the climb out and she tried to remember whether it had leaving Cicely yesterday. She wasn't due to fly for the next few days and vowed to take a look tomorrow after breakfast. And not to mention a word of it to Fleischman until it was fixed. 

Ever since they'd gotten together, his vicarious fear of flying had increased. He'd pretty well plateaued with his own worry and, though she'd never admit it to him, had even calmed quite a bit as a passenger. She'd even given him a couple of impromptu flying lessons - well, steering more than flying, really - when they'd been aloft together, bored on their way to some remote outpost or other. And he'd done well enough for a novice. But he was always worried the days she flew. 

He'd never say as much, and he knew well enough to not even hint he'd rather she not fly. But she knew he'd been elated when Red offered to pick up two of her mail days, to give her more time with her mayoral duties. She only flew twice a week now, minus the odd charter here and there. But Joel was always a little more drawn, a little more on edge those mornings.

She figured he needed a new outlet for his excess nervous energy now that they'd pretty well settled into a comfortable pattern together. They still fought like cats and dogs sometimes, but they both knew they were getting into bed together later that night which took away a lot of the meaner, angrier edge they'd always had before the got together. Fighting was no longer a pretense to try to disprove their attraction to one another, but rather a complex form of mental foreplay.

She straightened out of her bank, heading due east. She had just started to break through the uppermost layer of clouds into blue sky when it happened. It was a quiet pop that set everything into motion. Oddly anticlimactic for what it actually was. Engine silence, a stream of white smoke, and then a spray of oil came just after, splattering her windshield. Just her luck, this would happen in a cloud of all places, where she couldn't see. She reached for her radio and declared a mayday and gave her current position. There was no way she'd be able to get back to the airfield. She'd have to make a quick decision about a landing spot and would have to settle for whatever appeared once she got low enough to see. She knew she should be outside of town and away from most buildings by this point in her climb. If she had enough time and found a good spot, this would just be a hard landing, but the clouds were very low. Her gauges showed a steady and accelerating decline in altitude. She'd stay in control right up until she couldn't - fly into the crash like she'd learned to do. She never imagined herself doing it. She was too busy to panic and eminently grateful that she was alone for this with only herself to worry about.

The cockpit was eerily quiet with just the sound of air passing over it. As she flew lower and lower, the altimeter's number became much too small to be believed, especially if she still couldn't see the ground. Short, fixed wings made for terrible gliding, though, she knew, and she had to have dropped fast. By the time she could see well enough through the clouds, she saw terrain just below her. Her speed was significantly faster than a normal landing, with little available to slow her. She was at least going to bounce hard and tried to prepare for that. She had a lot of fuel on board, too. As the clouds dissipated, she saw that she was 50 feet above an empty field but lined up over a fence. She tried to pull to the right when a wheel caught on something below, the cabin turned violently, and everything went black.

\----

Sitka was 2 hours away by air, and Joel sat silently in the seat next to Red. He'd flown often enough with Red that they'd had a certain rapport, topics they had enough in common to discuss. Today, Red didn't seem to know what to say, since Sitka ATC hadn't provided details beyond that her plane had gone down a few minutes after takeoff. In Red's mind, he knew the statistics. Knew the risks, the friends he'd lost to the profession. Consequently, his assessment was much grimmer than he was willing to share with Joel. Plus, Joel showed no signs he wanted to talk. He'd been quiet since takeoff, fidgeting and twisting his wedding band around and back on his finger as he stared out the window, thinking of how everything had finally come together with them. They'd been married just shy of 3 years now, and he smiled in spite of everything, remembering how they'd gotten engaged. With Elaine, it was flowers and dinner with expensive wine in a swanky Manhattan restaurant he couldn't come close to affording while in med school. With Maggie, of course, well, nothing ever traversed the traditional path.

They'd both been filthy and exhausted when it happened. He just was in a white undershirt and boxer shorts, since she made him strip everything dirty off to keep the interior of the plane clean. They'd flown up to hold a morning clinic in a remote village up north. As usual, he hadn't anticipated more than just checkups, but babies had their own ideas about when they arrived. She'd once again served as delivery nurse, helping him as the baby came screaming into the world 3 weeks early to its dazed parents. As her plane soared south towards home, he peered at the glacier below cautiously, hanging onto the handle on the ceiling, as he did in those earlier days - his security blanket.

She'd turned her head towards him and watched him before smiling when she met his eyes. "Fleischman?"

"What? Shouldn't you watch the road?"

Her eyes narrowed playfully. "Are you really going to tell me how to fly my plane?"

"You had no problem backseat driving all through my delivery earlier."

"That was me helping. You're just criticizing... Anyway, I was going to say...it's going to be cold soon."

He rolled his eyes. "It's Alaska. It's always cold, O'Connell. I appreciate your timely weather update, though."

"I just mean, we should get married."

"What?!"

"Before it's too cold. I don't want to have to people bundled up in mittens and wool hats at our wedding."

"Did I miss something here? Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not engaged. I haven't asked you yet." He knew that for sure because he'd been carrying the ring he'd planned to give her in his pocket for 3 months now, waiting for the right moment. "You're not even supposed to know I'm going to."

"Well, I do. And I'm half this decision. So I'm asking you. You wanna? Next weekend maybe?" 

"Next weekend?!"

"If we wait much past then, it's gonna be too cold to have it in the chapel. Or anywhere really. Oh...but our folks have to fly in probably... you want your mom there, right? Weekend after that, then?" She paused in their conversation to radio her next turn into air traffic control.

"Wait, wait, wait. This is all wrong. You're talking about this like we're two people trying to meet up to play golf or something. This is supposed to be romantic. I...I should be asking you. On one knee. With a ring. And flowers. And not smeared in... everything I'm smeared in right now."

"This is inherently romantic - we're talking about getting married. And, A, that's sexist - there is no reason women can't ask. So I'm asking you. B, you can try to contort yourself down on the floorboard there if you want to get on your knee, but I don't need theatrics really. C, you can bring me flowers anytime. Not that you ever have... D, I'm just as...smeared on as you are. And E, the ring's in your right pants pocket."

He blinked at her in disbelief. "How did you..."

"You're not stealthy, you know. You've put it in there every morning for months now. And unless you have a very well-kept secret about another girlfriend, I assume it's intended for me. I'm tired of waiting. Let's do it." 

And so they'd married the Saturday two weekends following. They'd been lucky and gotten a warmer than average and sunny day. His parents and hers had been in attendance, along with most of the rest of Cicely, the church filled with hanging paper cranes Marilyn had led the mass folding of. Adam had even appeared, wearing his wool hat and no shoes, of course. But no one wore mittens.

\-----  
She first smelled aviation fuel and heard the sound of wind blowing and but she went almost instantly back to sleep. The next time she woke, Maggie became quickly aware of the sensation of pain when she breathed. Just on her left side, but with every breath it came. Her next thought was of her plane. She wasn't in it and was damn sure she had been last she knew. She thought through her last memories of flying, and none were a great sign for her plane having escaping this unscathed. She had no recollection of getting out of the plane but must have at some point. With her next breath, she finally got concerned about whether she was going to escape in one piece herself. Then she thought of Joel. 

A few years ago, right when they'd first tentatively started up together, she'd had to go to Anchorage for a friend's funeral. When she came back, he'd realized it was another bush pilot. And that his plane had gone down and that she'd neglected to mention those details. It was that look she pictured now - the sadness, the worry, the frustration, the realization that she'd always do this and that the more he cared about her, the more he'd be broken if it was her someday. And now it was. Who would be the one to have to tell him? And what if she didn't get through this...

She was lying prone on scratchy scrubby grass, struggling to breathe comfortably or at all, settling for taking short shallow breaths, despite her now rising panic. Something was definitely not right. She knew she shouldn't even try to get up. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind moving around her. She was grateful in that moment that she'd paused to tell him she loved him as she flew out their door yesterday morning. 

\-----

Anymore, Joel was a master of professional detachment, necessitated by practicing in such a small town. He had to be able to move seamlessly from friend to doctor and back again. Maggie had always presented a problem. If there had been any other options, he'd have preferred it, and he knew she would have too. Normally, they made it work, but he had an incredibly difficult time dealing with her being in pain. 

He'd gotten her to the hospital in time, when she'd had appendicitis, but it had been close - much closer than he was comfortable with. He couldn't sedate or medicate her since he knew she'd need immediate surgery, so the time spent returning from the river and awaiting the helicopter was awful. She was in and out of lucid consciousness and felt terrible when she was awake. And he couldn't do a thing but watch. The whole thing scared the shit out of him on multiple levels, not least of which was the realization that if he wasn't already in love with her, that it was only a matter of time.

He'd stayed up the entire night, talking to her surgeons and a parade of irritated nurses and attendings and then watched over her in the recovery room. He'd, of course, never told her about any of this, letting her instead think the helicopter ride had been the worst of what he'd been through. And that was long before they'd gotten together. 

Luckily for him, for as often as she put herself in harm's way, she was rarely harmed. Once, though, she'd been chopping wood and the handle slipped from her grip. She'd gotten a bad laceration on her leg, one she calmly wrapped a scarf around before limping inside, propping her foot on their coffee table. 

"Hey, Flesichman," she'd said in a calm, almost conversational tone. "Can you look at this? I cut my leg." He took one look and felt a wave of queasiness. 

"O'Connell, honey, that's really bad...you need stitches." He turned to grab his medical bag, frustrated at not finding it by the door. "Damn it, where..."

"Honey?" She rolled her eyes, smirking at him. "Dresser. And calm down. I keep telling you, you should always leave things in the same place so you can find them without panicking. I don't think this needs stitches either. It's just bleeding a lot." 

For once in his life, he was able to quiet her with one look. He retrieved the bag and prepped her leg. He kept having to look away from the wound and her face, trying to shake that feeling. He winced more than she did as he slowly drew the stitches through her. 

"Ouch! You'd better not leave a scar," she'd said, peering critically at his handiwork. "Ow!"

He tried halfheartedly to banter with her. "I'm going for a scar. I'm gonna sew my initials into you, O'Connell. Brand you as mine." She laughed but his hands were trembling, she saw, without his total concentration. She stilled his hands with hers, lowering her head to look in his eyes with concern. "Hey, are you okay? You're usually so calm in doctor mode. I can try to do it myself if it's bothering you. I can sew."

"Sew skin!? No, you can't. And I'm fine. I just...if this were anyone else, it would be...look, I'm okay. Just don't talk for a minute."

He took a slow breath and started in again. She watched him work quietly, skillfully closing her wound. Without her voice in his ears, he was able to slip into a better clinical mindset, pretend this was some stranger's leg, and finish. 

As always was the case whenever he 'played doctor' around her, she found herself overcome with adoration for him. And lust - there was just something about him doing these things - for her or others. Maybe it was some form of hero worship, but it triggered something in her every time. He wiped her leg up and rose to tell her she was all done, and she gripped his shirt with both hands, pulled him towards her, and kissed him as they fell backwards onto their couch. Afterwards, as they laid together, he tried to joke that she should hurt herself more often if that was going to be his reward. But he was still unsettled and never forgot the feeling of being almost unable to give her stitches and hoped he never faced anything worse than that with her.

In the end, it'd taken 19 stitches to close her leg - 4 interior and 15 on the outside. The stitches were tidy, even little parallel lines, curving together just below her knee on the inside of her leg. He took them out easily 2 weeks later which was when she first noticed it - just by happenstance, it had healed in the shape of a J. The thought always made him smile whenever he looked at her legs. And she was always a little bit mad about it.  
\-----

As Red turned south to land, he saw the crash site in the field just east of the airport. He hoped he'd finish turning fast enough that Joel wouldn't catch sight of it. The sharp inhalation of breath he heard confirmed Joel had seen the wreckage, too.

For his part, the sight was actually relieving to Red. It could have been a survivable crash. One wing had been torn off but her fuselage was intact and not terribly far away from the lost wing. No sign of fire anywhere, either. It appeared she'd managed to guide it into a hard landing, and not a full, cartwheeling crash.

Joel, though, just saw pieces of Maggie's familiar plane strewn across a field. He lifted his hand to his face, rubbing his eyes, trying to brush away the memories of that aircraft that were flooding his thoughts. Her calm and decisive demeanor that time they'd gone down in the preserve before he'd fixed her engine, infuriating her by impressing her. The twice she'd shuttled his parents to Cicely, the latter time the morning of their wedding. All the trips effectuated by Soapy and his death, long before anyone - except maybe Soapy himself - realized where the two of them were heading. The many flights between Juneau and Anchorage and the many other tiny towns further afield. That uncomfortable flight back from Juneau the first time they almost got together when she thought they already had. The countless times he picked her up after she was done with a run, waiting reclined against his truck while watching her land in the field in Cicely and then jump down, aviators on, looking to him every bit the fantasy Amelia Earhart figure he dreamed about the first time he realized he felt something for her. That plane was so much a part of her that the very sight of it usually made him happy. Now, it lay in pieces below him. And he still had no word on Maggie.

"Sitka emergency response is going to meet us," Red reported. "They didn't say anything else. I'm sorry. Should know something soon." He maneuvered the plane to the runway and touched them down, taxiing to an area Joel had never been near the airport fire station. A somber-looking younger man in an EMS uniform awaited the plane.  
\-----

"Maggie? Can you talk to us Maggie?"

The paramedics kneeled on either side of her, one radioing for a ambulance, the other talking to her and cataloging her vital signs. Maggie made a small noise in response, confirming the real answer to the question was no. They gently rolled her to her back, cradling her head as she turned.

"Maggie we need to get you into a hospital. An ambulance is on its way. You are Maggie O'Connell from Cicely, Alaska, correct? That's what your registration says."

Maggie nodded, her eyes still closed. She heard sirens in the distance. The medics moved her hands to her abdomen and checked her over. 

"You're married, Maggie?"

Another nod. She opened her eyes to bright light and blurred figures in and out of her periphery.

"Okay, we'll try to reach Mr. O'Connell back in Cicely as soon as we can and tell him where you are."

She shook her head, and tried to say Fleischman, trying to correct them. It was a painful struggle to breathe and nothing came out when she tried to speak. She closed her eyes again. 

Next she knew, she was on a stretcher inside what had to be an ambulance. She could feel the movements of a vehicle as the medics bustled around her. "Maggie? She's in and out...Maggie?"

She opened her eyes again. A man's face was above hers. "Maggie do you have any allergies?"

She shook her head, thinking of her panicked few days with the dust mites - she knew they meant anything which would impact treatment options. "We can't find a listing for your husband, Maggie, and your home line is ringing without answer. The emergency contact on file with your license with the FAA is a Maurice Minnifield in Cicely, Alaska. We're going to contact him. Does he know how to reach your husband?" 

Shit, she knew she should have updated that stuff but kept putting it off - too much paperwork and who planned to crash anyway. She still wasn't used to the word husband as it referred to Joel Fleischman. 

She closed her eyes again and went back to when she'd first encountered that term from a stranger, on their connecting flight to Paris. They were on their honeymoon, and she went to check them in for the second leg. They asked where her 'husband' was. The last thing that word conjured was her cranky travelmate.

The flight to Chicago had been long and delayed before it even took off by 2 hours. There'd been some change to their seating, too, and he had to sit two rows in front of her, something she initially considered unfortunate but which she grew to see the benefit of as she watched him slowly implode with frustration. He was uncomfortable, hungry, and snappish upon arrival in Chicago, so she'd sent him for a snack while she checked them in. As luck would have it, her pilot friends had called some mainline pilots who had pulled strings to surprise them with first class seats for the rest of their journey. Joel's mood substantially improved and they rode in relative comfort on to CDG, toasting their new bond with champagne as they took off. He'd fallen asleep next to her, his fingers laced with hers as she read her book. She woke up to him leaning across her to look through the window as they prepared to land. He'd never been to Euope and his face was exuberant, and she couldn't help but laugh happily at the sight of him. He turned to her, grinning and said he couldn't believe she'd married him finally. She laughed again and kissed him, and they kept going until they reached the gate. Of course, they then immediately got into an argument about which way they needed go to get to customs. 

They spent the next 7 days kissing, dining, arguing, laughing, drinking wine, and making love as they made their way through France, some things featuring more often than others. She'd had scenes from only a handful of moments in her life saved in her mind like picture postcards, but they way he looked at her on that plane was one of them.

Inside the ambulance now, she struggled to breathe despite the flow of oxygen from the mask covering her face. Thinking of that trip, of Joel, of how they felt in that moment and in so many together since then, she was suddenly overcome with sadness, thinking what he might be going through right now.  
\-----

It's a commonly held belief that doctors are the worst patients. In reality, doctors' family members are the worst patients because at least when doctors don't feel well they don't have the energy to second guess and battle over treatment decisions. The healthy doctor spouse of a critically ill person is every hospital's staff's worst nightmare. And Joel was no exception. 

He entered the emergency room the polar opposite of 'calm'. He was frantic with worry and incensed that no one would talk to him, as a physician or as her husband. He even had flashes of irritation with her - Maggie's protest against 'the male patriarchy' and refusal to take his last name was making it extremely difficult to establish that he was her husband and that they could talk to him. The EMS guys had taken his terrified and shattered demeanor as obvious evidence of spousal connection and answered his every question. They had been grateful to get tell him she was alive, but could only worry him by describing the injuries she'd sustained. 

When he finally did get granted access at the hospital, she was already in surgery. Getting details about that was like pulling teeth. Finally a surgeon still in scrubs appeared in the hallway Joel had angrily paced for two hours. 

"Dr. Fleischman? You're Maggie O'Connell's husband, right?" He extended a smile and his hand, to shake Joel's.

"How is she?" He stomped up to him without offering his hand back. He was terse and had no energy to feign being pleasant. 

"In the recovery room now. Everyone made it through fine. The tear in her lung was relatively small and closed easily."

"Pneumothorax?" He wanted a precise description of what had happened and what hadn't, not this layman's bullshit.

"No, surprisingly, given the level of trauma required for her to have punctured it. No collapse. And just one broken rib. I would guess the force of the accident threw her sideways against the door. She's smart to have put those shoulder harness restraints in - you don't see them in a lot of those smaller planes, and EMS said they saved her life."

Joel closed his eyes briefly, remembering that series of arguments, thankful it had been one of the rare ones he'd won. "Any other injuries?"

"She has a lot of bruising, of course. Some mild contusions. No sign of head injury but of course we'll check again when she's awake and stabilized. Vitals look good."

Joel calmed a little. "What's next?"

"You can see her now. I'll take you back that way. We want to monitor her for a few days, of course, and check again for concussion as I said before. We did one quick ultrasound, but I'd like to do another, just to be safe. Oh, and she has proximal phalangeal fracture in her right pinkie finger. The least of her problems, but I wanted to mention it as well. Really though, it's a miracle everyone made it through as well as they did. Your wife must be an excellent pilot to have escaped this so unscathed."

"She is. She's amazing. But never tell her I said so." Joel smiled and then paused. "You keep saying everyone - did she have a passenger with her? I thought she was on a mail run."

The surgeon looked surprised and then uncomfortable. "No, but... surely you know..."

Joel was instantly concerned again. "What's wrong?"

"Well... Doctor, your wife is pregnant."

\-----

He was half asleep in the guest chair that he'd pulled next to her bed. His hand covered hers, so when she finally stirred, he was on his feet instantly, leaning over her, his hand on her cheek, looking cautiously at her. "Maggie?"

One eye opened halfway. "It must be bad if you're calling me Maggie... Oh, I don't feel good." Her words slurred slightly from drowsiness as well as lingering anesthetic. 

"Yeah, well, you punctured your lung..." He glanced up at the monitor displaying her vital signs, checking her blood oxygen level and heart rate. The numbers looked good still.

"Oh. How's my plane?"

"What? Didn't you hear me? You punctured your lung! You had to have emergency surgery! Who cares about your plane?"

"I do. Is it broken?"

"Yeah. You ripped your wing off. But you're alive."

"My poor plane..."

"It's insured right? You can replace it."

"Fleischman! It's not like car insurance - it's much more complicated than that. Plus I know that plane. I love that plane."

"I know you do." He tried to have a gentler tone of voice, took her hand, and kissed it. "But you got pretty broken, too, and I love you a lot more than that plane. Maurice got the call you'd gone down, you know...they told me when you didn't show up for lunch. He didn't know whether... Red and I flew over the pieces of your plane coming into Sitka, and I still didn't know if you were even... " He didn't bother to finish his thought and instead leaned in to kiss her forehead.

Her eyes opened more to take the sight of him in as he pulled back. "You look horrible."

He grinned. "Aw, thanks. You have no idea how glad I am to be standing here being verbally abused by you. Really. And that was a hell of a spectacular landing, from what the EMS guys said. They were impressed. I won't even mention the seatbelts..." Her eyes searched his face - he looked like he'd been through hell, his eyes tired and tinged red. 

She smiled back. "I love you, too, Fleischman. I don't hurt as bad as before when I breathe." 

"Good. They closed up your lung which should help. Immensely."

"Well, even still...I must be pumped full of morphine."

"Paracetamol. Acetaminophen. Tylenol, basically."

"Whatever."

He smiled more broadly at her. "No, not whatever. You're on paracetamol. I've checked to make sure every time they come in with your next dose. Believe me. Paracetamol."

"Okay, okay, Fleischman. Why this sudden giddy interest in pain management anyway?" She tried to push herself to a seated position, and he laid her back, pushing the button to raise her bed slightly instead.

"Are you crazy!? Don't try to sit up, you have a broken rib and a hole in your side!" He was desperate to tell her and squeezed her hand, resting his other just below her stomach. Then he hesitated. "How alert do you feel right now?" 

"Oh pretty good, I guess, now that I'm more awake. You really do look like shit, though, Fleischman. When did you last sleep? Wait, what day is it? What time is it even?"

"It's 2:30 am. It's Thursday."

She smiled. "Hey, happy birthday." Her smile faded some. "We missed your surprise party, though. Oh and I lost your card."

"I talked to Holling earlier - they're all celebrating that you're okay. So am I. And pretty surprised. I'll live without the party...so this paracetamol thing..." He looked at her, his eyes twinkling happily.

"Right. You want to tell me why that's so important here? To be honest, having sampled both now, I think I prefer morphine."

"You can't take morphine if you're pregnant."

Her expression didn't change. "Well. Good to know."

"So..." He smiled again, waiting for her to realize.

"So? You're the one who went to medical school. Why do I care about how and when to prescribe which pain pills to which people?

"You're not getting it. They can't give *you* morphine. Because *you're* pregnant."

"I'm what?"

"Pregnant." He rubbed his hand gently on her abdomen.

"I crashed my plane and woke up pregnant?!"

He smiled even bigger, dimples flashing. "Yeah. That's what they told me just a little while ago. They ran your bloodwork before surgery. Thankfully."

"How the hell did this happen?!"

"The frequent sex we have is high on my list of suspects."

"But I'm on the pill, and we weren't trying to..."

"Well, we did. Oops." He was beaming at her.

"When?"

"I don't know, one of those times."

"No, Fleischman, when's the baby due?"

"Oh, um...I don't know that for certain either, actually. It depends on you and your...uh, cycle. Which I purposely don't know off the top of my head because you yelled at me that time you thought I was tracking it to blame your moods on PMS. Based on your blood work, though, I'd guess you're 2 months in or so."

"We're going to have a baby?" She smiled despite her shock. 

"That's usually how pregnancies go, yeah. How do you feel about this?"

"How do you feel?"

"Honestly? I'm terrified. But also...I'm really, really happy. I know we didn't mean to do this but...remember our conversation that time - tangible expressions of extreme emotion? I can't even express how extreme this feels. I'm very happy." His eyes were tinged red again. "You?"

She nodded. "Me too. I'm sort of shocked but happy. Very. And really glad you are. I love you. Did you tell anyone yet?"

"No. Just the two of us know. Three of us, I guess." He rubbed her abdomen once more, gently, kissed her, and sat back down, his hand still on hers. "I spent the entire flight over here pleading with God or anyone who'd listen that I'd be able to bring you home again. And now I'm bringing two people home."

She closed her eyes, still smiling. "I can't believe you found out before me for once. About this, of all things..."

"I can't believe any of this. It's been a hell of a day. We sure don't do anything halfway, do we?"


End file.
